The discussion of the background of the invention herein is included to explain the context of the invention. This is not to be taken as an admission that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge at the priority date of any of the claims.
Usually, an eyewear equipment wearer wishing to have an eyewear equipment goes to see an eye care practitioner.
The eye care practitioner orders the eyewear equipment at an optical lab by sending an order request to the optical lab. The order request comprises wearer data, for example the wearer's prescription, spectacle frame data, for example the type of spectacle frame the wearer has selected, and lens data, for example the type of optical lens the wearer has selected.
The optical lab receives the order request and sends it to an optical lens designer. The lens designer uses some of the data comprised in the order request to calculate the design of the optical lenses to be provided to the wearer. The optical design determined by the lens designer is sent to the optical lab and the optical lenses are manufactured based on the calculated design.
The manufactured optical lenses can be processed to add the optical treatments according to the order request.
The optical lenses are then sent to the eye care practitioner. The optical lenses may be edged to fit the spectacle frame prior to being sent to the eye care practitioner and mounted on the spectacle frame.
The current optical lens delivering process presents some drawbacks.
In recent years, new optical designs have been invented. These new optical designs are more and more personalized according to the wearer. To calculate such optical designs the lens designer needs more and more wearer parameters, therefore the data transmitted between the different actors of the lens delivering process comprises more and more parameters. In the actual delivering process all the wearer parameters are transmitted to all the actors of the processing device making the data exchange more and more complex.
Furthermore, when a lens designer creates a new design allowing or taking into consideration a new wearer parameter, the current lens delivering process requires that all the actors involved in the delivering process update their interfaces so as to be able to receive and send such new parameters. Even though, some of the actors of the delivering process may have no interest in this new parameter. In other words, when a lens designer wishes to propose a new optical design that considers a new wearer parameter, all of the actors of the optical lens delivering process need to update their interfaces, making the proposition of a new optical design complex, time consuming and costly.
Therefore, the current delivering process is not well adapted to the most recent optical designs and to the proposition of new optical designs.